


Six Seeds

by pendrecarc



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 05:49:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20420945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendrecarc/pseuds/pendrecarc
Summary: Persephone goes home.





	Six Seeds

**Author's Note:**

> For the Rule 63 exchange request: f!Hades/Persephone.

On the day Persephone was released, the Goddess of the Underworld met her after what would in any other place have been breakfast (and oh, but Persephone was desperate for a bite to eat; she’d been dreaming of honey-drizzled figs every night for an age) and cast a dark glance at the small satchel already tucked under Persephone’s arm.

“Is that all you have to bring home with you?”

“It’s not as though I had time to assemble a wardrobe when I left in the first place,” Persephone said, very reasonably in her opinion. She’d been hoping for one of Hades’ rare smiles today, or even the sort of frown that meant she was only in a petulant mood, not the blank look that meant she’d come over all high-and-mighty Sovereign Mistress of the Deep. Honestly, you’d think the last six months had never happened. “Have you been packing, too?”

Hades’ mouth had been hovering on the edge of a smile. Now it softened in confusion. “What?”

Persephone nodded at the white wicker basket tucked under her reluctant hostess’ arm. It was large enough to hold more than the wardrobe Persephone would have assembled, if she’d been permitted the time, and it should have been awkward, but Hades held it without trouble. She wore that practiced confidence like a second skin down here. Nothing must disturb or discomfit her in her own realm. Persephone should know. She’d certainly been trying.

“Ah,” said Hades. “That’s for later. For now—” Hades offered her arm.

“Escorting me to the gates of your palace? How chivalrous.”

Hades raised one long, thin eyebrow. Her eyes seemed particularly sharp today. Not bright, never that—but reflective, like the rings of grey around each pupil were polished silver, sending back the light instead of swallowing it as they usually did. “To the edge of my realm, I thought.”

Persephone blinked. “Oh. I do know the way, you know. At least, I know most of it.”

“Yes,” said Hades, with a long-suffering air, “I’m well aware you’ve been tramping up and down the banks of every river I have for the last six months, pulling out every reed you came across—”

“Not all of them! Just one of each. Or maybe two. They’re not at all like the ones we have at home. Have you ever taken a close look at your cattails? They—”

“My point,” said Hades very deliberately, “is that you may know the way back to the Acheron, but once you’ve gotten there, what did you plan to do?”

“Your ferryman likes me,” Persephone said. “I’m sure he could be persuaded.”

“The entire point of him is that he’s not open to persuasion.”

“I’d have said the same of you when I first got here.”

“Persephone.”

Persephone looked down at the area that was still outstretched to her, at the grey-black sheen of her skin, then at the paleness of her own. Hers was almost translucent in the lamplight after half a year out of the sun. The veins showed through, but they were purple and blue, not black.

She smiled and tucked her hand in the crook of a cool elbow.

They walked to the Acheron together. She was a little surprised Hades didn’t summon her chariot, as she so often did when venturing out to the borders of her kingdom. She didn’t much mind the delay, though. Six months ago she’d have chafed at it, but now she found herself walking a little to the side of the road to let the tendrils of young grasses brush against her ankles, and every so often she bent to pluck one of the queer underworld flowers and tuck it into her hair. There was nothing aboveground that smelled quite like one of Hades’ orchids. “I wonder if my mother could manage something like this,” she said aloud. “How long will it survive if I bring it with me?”

“Not long,” said Hades dryly. She’d stopped to watch as Persephone leant down to frown at the long, crooked stem, pushing her fingers a little into the dirt at the root. When Persephone looked up, Hades was watching her with her head tilted to one side; a little amused, but something else, too. “Not without the soil, and certainly not without the waters of the Styx. I can have more brought to you.”

“That would be kind.” Very possibly, that was the first time those words had ever been said to her. Persephone thought was high time a precedent was set. “No need to do it indefinitely. If she has a season to observe it, she should have some idea of whether it’ll work or not.”

“It’s no trouble.”

“Not for you,” said Persephone, taking her arm again and turning back along the road. “But you won’t be the one delivering it, will you?”

“And why would you assume that?”

“What,” she said, laughing, “you want me to believe you’d go to all that effort yourself when you could be sitting all haughty on your marble throne, dispensing judgment while you send someone else off to do the practical work? You had better make it Melinoë. She could do with some fresh air.”

“She wouldn’t know _what_ to do with it.”

“Probably not. I’ll teach her.”

“You’ll teach her frolicking too, I expect, and capering, and whatever else it is nymphs do aboveground, then send her back when she’s developed the habit.”

“I’ve never frolicked a day in my life! And certainly not down here. Maybe I should have. It’d brighten the place up.”

“You’ve done quite enough of that already,” said Hades, but she didn’t look at Persephone when she said it, and even though it should have sounded wry it just came out wistful. Persephone elected not to comment. Privately she thought Hades could do with some fresh air herself. Maybe even a little light capering, though it wouldn’t do to encourage her in whatever cliche-ridden ideas she had about the Eleusinian Mysteries. Which, as rites went, were utterly dignified and refined, or at least Hades had better not suggest otherwise in her mother’s hearing.

Persephone was about to say so when Cerberus remembered he was supposed to be guarding that particular stretch of road—he really hadn’t been the same since that whole business with the lyre—and came bounding up, three jaws agape and howling in her general direction.

“Enough of that!” Hades snapped. There was just enough low rumble in her tones to remind Persephone what she was, and Cerberus sank at once onto the ground, with a trio of whimpers. “You know better.”

“Oh, leave off. You know I confuse him. All the breathing I do, and that pesky heartbeat.” She bent down and rubbed behind one of those huge, flapping ears. The next head over turned toward her and panted in her face. She wrinkled her nose at the stench of sulfur but made the appropriate soothing noises. “You know you’re going to miss me,” she crooned at him. “Who’s going to come throw off your routine once I’ve gone?”

“We’ve had no shortage of people trying,” said Hades. She was still smarting a little over the latest demigod who’d forced his way in. Some sort of royal hazing ritual, if Persephone remembered it right; he’d still been stinking of horseshit from the last task he’d been set. She’d been looking forward to some upperworldly conversation, but he had _not_ been good company.

“Well, can you blame them?” Persephone asked. “Now I’ve had a taste of your hospitality and come out the other side, everyone’s going to want to vacation here.”

“They’re welcome to try. Are you quite done with that?”

She gave him one last scratch behind the jaw and stood, wiping infernal drool on the hem of her peplos. She looked along down the road. They were only a stone’s throw now from the banks of the Acheron, and she could just see Charon poling toward them from the opposite shore. “Yes,” she said. “I’m ready.”

It was just as well Hades had come. Charon took more persuading than they’d expected, even with his Goddess herself explaining the change in plans. “That's the wrong way,” he insisted. “And you haven’t brought any coins.”

“I didn’t have any when I came down here, either,” said Persephone. “Just let me pop back and get them for you. I’m sure I had a few in the chest under my bed—I won’t be more than a minute.”

Charon turned his dour, stubborn, not-very-bright face to Hades, who was trying to look stern rather than exasperated. “Whose orders do you obey?”

“Yours,” he said readily. “And you’ve said I’m only to take souls the other way ‘round, and each of them’s to bring the coins.”

“And now I’m telling you something different, just this once.”

“But she’s too heavy! Look at her. All that flesh and blood. We’ll never make it halfway.”

“I haven’t had a bite to eat since I got here,” Persephone assured him. “I’ll hardly weigh a thing. And if we get a little top-heavy, your mistress can hop out and swim the rest of the way.”

He looked uncertain. Hades sighed. “Just this once in the wrong direction, and then _I’ll_ bring you the coins, if you really must have them. Twice as many as usual. Can we be leaving? I promised her mother I'd return her in time, and I don’t want to be making excuses.”

The raft was a little top-heavy, not being designed for anyone still clinging to the mortal coil. Persephone decided the best course of action was to cling to Hades, too, since she was standing straight and tall in the middle of the thing and didn’t seem inclined to budge over. If Persephone’s end of the raft was going to sink so far she toppled over, Hades was certainly going to come with her.

No such mishap occurred, and soon they were stepping onto the shore. The air was suddenly heavier, more substantial, as though it was actually made to be used. Persephone took what felt like the first proper breath she’d had since she left her mother’s house.

And there was Demeter, waiting across the last heather-strewn field. Persephone raised an arm to wave and thought her mother was waving back, holding herself with an effort just past the border; but it was difficult to see, because her eyes were already filling with tears.

She let out a very wet, very mortal sniff and tucked the satchel a little tighter under her arm, and then she turned to Hades. “Come with me,” she urged. “Just for the day. Come and see what spring is like—”

But Hades was shaking her head. She looked different here, with the rays of the world’s sun just reaching past the border. They seemed to travel straight through her flat dark skin as they might travel through murky water or thick glass, and come out on the other side. She looked strangely insubstantial.

Persephone reached for her free hand, just to make sure it still had weight. “Come with me,” she repeated.

“Not now,” said Hades. Her voice was rough, where usually it was like water flowing over cold, smooth stone. “You have a reunion to enjoy. I’d only dampen it.” That was probably true, but it didn’t mean Persephone didn’t want her there. But she was pulling her hand away, the better to hold out the wicker basket and remove its lid. Inside was a small seedling.

“What is it?”

Hades opened her mouth, then closed it. Opened it again. “It’s a pomegranate tree. From the palace gardens. And soil—I can send more, like I said—”

But Persephone was laughing even as she wiped tears away, shaking her own head at the absurd inappropriateness of the gift. “After all the trouble the first one caused?”

“Well, this one won’t,” said Hades, avoiding her eyes. “Just keep an eye on it once it’s grown and given fruit. Make sure no-one eats it, and it can’t do any harm.”

“I don’t know,” said Persephone, smiling. “I might not be able to help myself. I have been _very_ hungry.” Hades stared at her. Persephone took the basket out of her arms and set it down on the grass. Then she moved into the place it had left behind. “And those seeds did cause a disproportionate amount of trouble—but if I remember correctly, they were delicious.”

Hades swallowed. She looked properly uncertain, now. Persephone liked it when she looked like that. It didn’t happen often. “You have no sense of self-preservation.”

“I think I have just enough,” said Persephone, taking Hades’ face between her own warm palms and leaning in to kiss her. Just a quick kiss, because she did have a reunion to enjoy, and it had after all only been six pomegranate seeds. This time. “I’ll be seeing you.”


End file.
